In the 80s, you may have put coin after coin into your favourite arcade machine, giving a countless amount of money to a large box. Fast-forward 25 years or so, and using a £25 Raspberry Pi 3, along with some creative hacking, you can relive your high-score glory days as you play your favourite old-school classics to your heart's content.
Independent Sheffield-based web developer Matt Brailsford, aka Circuitbeard, shares his retro-Pi plans, which use a repurposed miniature desktop arcade machine as the housing.
For this build, you'll need a Raspberry Pi with a memory card, a Pimoroni Picade PCB, and a TFT screen with an HDMI input, and an HDMI cable and power supply. Additionally, procure a panel mount joystick, generally using microswitches, electrical buttons, a USB power supply with a micro USB plug, and a USB-A to micro USB cable. Four-ohm speakers and a 3.5mm audio jack are needed for audio. A Wi-Fi dongle (or the Pi 3's built-in Wi-Fi) and wireless keyboard are helpful for setting everything up after it's in your cabinet.
Power up your Raspberry Pi and monitor, then connect them with the HDMI cable. Install a piece of software called RetroPie, following the instructions that can be found on GitHub. This will set up your Pi as a retro-games emulator and will allow you to put ROMs, or copies of video games, on to it to play. The simplest way to add ROMs is with a USB drive, as also outlined in that wiki. A good source for these files is archive.org/details/internetarcade.
Plug the Picade PCB into your Raspberry Pi via USB. Wire your joystick and buttons into the Picade board after connecting them via USB cable. The Raspberry Pi will then interpret button and joystick input as keyboard presses. Plug the audio jack into the Raspberry Pi's output port and the Picade PCB's 3.5mm input jack, then wire your speakers into the adjacent screw terminals. Connect the Wi-Fi/Ethernet and a keyboard if using it. You can also use a custom-built kit, such as the Picade, for greater convenience.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
